Eight Chapters

Chapter Seven (Part 2)

First off, it's vitally important to know that belief in the fact of
prophecy is fundamental to the Jewish Faith. After all, if we don't
believe that humans are capable of communing with G-d and deciphering His
intentions as the prophets did, then we obviously can't accept the
veracity of the Torah which is rooted in prophecy and is the bedrock of
Judaism.

And so we believe that the prophets were able to ascend upward and to then
dwell in G-d's Presence (in ways we'll discuss later on), which would then
enable them to descend back downward and impart G-d's intentions to us.
While they could very well have done as much for their own spiritual
edification or for the sake of other peoples' growth and betterment, which
they did do often enough, nonetheless that wasn't their primary role. The
prophets were to prophesy to the Jewish people of their times and of the
ages.

It's also important to realize that prophets served as vital links in the
transmission of the Oral Tradition, as they were scholars as well. In
fact, the belief in the prophets' scholarliness was one of the things that
set our understanding of prophecy apart from others'. For while other
faiths believed in the reality of prophecy, among other things they held
that anyone essentially good could be granted it out of the blue. We
contend though that a person needed to be far more than just essentially
good.

Aside from being wise and learned, prophets needed to be even-tempered,
healthy, idealistic, full of faith, and abstinent. They had to be of sound
mind and imaginative, to have meditated on the secrets of the universe and
of G-d, and they were to have been unaffected by thoughts of power,
influence, honor, and esteem. So it's clear that they were exemplary
people; but they weren't perfect, as we'll see.

Now, it's also important to know that there were degrees of prophecy, and
that there was a prophetic process and protocol to follow.